He Has the Whole World in His Hands
by tomato-greens
Summary: Adam chose. The end was different. Mild AC.


**Words:** 4523  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Pairings:** (hinted at) Crowley/Aziraphale, (hinted at) Shadwell/Madame Tracy, Newt/Anathema  
**Summary:** The end was different.

**Disclaimer:** It all belongs to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, especially since it's basically the last 150 pages (at least in my library's version of the text) condensed and re-written.

**AN:** I hope this isn't too repetitive? Some of the sections are almost totally lifted out of the book, with just a few changes to turn it around.

P.S. If you spot all the Queen references, thou art très cool.

_Before_

"Oh, if that's all that's worryin' you, don't you worry," said Adam airily, "'cos I could make you all just do whatever I wanted--"

He stopped, his ear listening in--not quite horror, not quite relish--in _fascination_--to the words his mouth was speaking. The Them were backing away.

Dog put his paws over his head.

Adam's face looked like an impersonation of the slow rise of an empire.

"No," he said hoarsely. "No. Come back! _I command you!"_

They froze in mid-dash.

Adam stared. His fingers twitched.

His body jerked. His head was thrown back. He raised his arms and pounded the sky with his fists.

His face twisted. The chalk floor cracked under his sneakers. Underneath the turmoil, he vaguely enjoyed the sensation.

Adam opened his mouth and screamed. It was a sound that a merely mortal throat should not have been able to utter (and was not, and it gave Adam a slight satisfaction that this should be so, that he was no mere mortal); it wound out of the quarry, mingled with the storm, caused the clouds to curdle into new and unpleasant shapes.

It went on and on.

It resounded around the universe, which is a good deal smaller than physicists would believe. It rattled the celestial spheres.

It spoke of loss, but mostly it spoke of gain, and maybe greed, and it did not stop for a very long time.

And then it did.

Something drained away, and something else replaced it.

Adam's head tilted down again. His eyes opened.

Whatever had been standing in the old quarry before, Adam Young was no longer standing there now, not quite. It was more than Adam Young.

The ghastly silence in the quarry remained.

The Them cowered against the chalk cliff, their eyes fixed on him.

"It's all right," said Adam, as one would to a frightened dog. "Pepper? Wensley? Brian? Come back here. It's all right. It's all right. I know everything now. And you're going to help me. Otherwise it's all goin' to happen wrong, if we don't do somethin'."

The Them did not want to follow him, not when his eyes gleamed like that. They did not want to, but they did, necessarily.

It was, Adam realized, like that bit about hypnotism in the _Boy's Own Book of 101 Thing To Do_ that the Them could never make work, only now he'd found out how to do it, and do it better.

•••

_During_

Clouds churned around the horizon. Overhead the sky was almost clear, the air torn by a slight breeze that promised to grow bigger. But it wasn't normal air. It had a crystallized looked to it, so that you might feel that if you turned your head you might see new facets. It did not so much sparkle as glisten. if you had to find a word to describe it, the word _thronged_ might slip insidiously into your mind. Thronged with insubstantial beings awaiting only the right moment to become very substantial.

Adam glanced up. In one sense there was just almost clear air overhead. In another, stretching off into infinity, were the hosts of Heaven and Hell, wingtip to wingtip. If you looked really closely, and had been specially trained, you could tell the difference.

Silence held the bubble of the world in its grip.

The door of the building swung open and the Four stepped out. There was no more than a hint of human about three of them now--they seemed to be humanoid shapes made up of all the things they were or represented. They made Death seem positively homely. His leather greatcoat and dark-visored helmet had become a cowled robe, but these were mere details. A skeleton, even a walking one, is at least human; Death of a sort lurks inside every living creature.

"The thing is," said Adam urgently, "they're not really real. They're just like nightmares, really. Don't be scared."

And the Them weren't.

"Even though nightmares come true sometimes," said Adam.

The Them stayed complacent.

"Good," said Adam.

The Four halted a few meters away.

IT HAS BEEN DONE, said Death. He leaned forward a little and stared eyelessly at Adam. It was hard to tell if he was surprised, but Adam rather thought he wasn't. Resigned, maybe, but not surprised.

Then, as quietly as he could, Death said, IT DIDN'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS.

And, somewhere else, it hadn't been. But that didn't matter, here and now.

Adam thought. "I guess you're right," he said, but he didn't really.

Death looked at the other three, and then back to Adam. Behind them a jeep skewed to a halt. They ignored it.

I SUPPOSE YOUR EXISTENCE REQUIRES THE ENDING OF THE WORLD. IT IS WRITTEN.

"That's a silly thing to write," said Adam calmly. "I dunt know why people go an' write things like that. Other people can always erase things. They should just keep it in their brains, where it's safe."

HUH, said Death. His colleagues grinned, though not quite in the same way as he did.

( "_That's the one, Mr. Shadwell,_" said Aziraphale, his words trailing into uncertainty even as he uttered them, "_the one with . . . the . . . T-shirt . . ._")

Death looked at Adam.

"You . . . are part . . . of us," said War, between teeth like beautiful bullets.

"_It is done. We make . . . the . . . world . . . anew_," said Pollution, his voice as insidious as something leaking out of a corroded drum into a water table.

"You . . . lead . . . us," said Famine.

And Adam hesitated. Voices inside him still cried out that this was false, and that the world wasn't his as well, and all he had to do was turn his back and make them go back into the minds of bewildered but well-meaning people. They weren't his kind of people.

In tiers above, the hosts of the sky waited for the Word.

("Ye canna want me to shoot him! He's but a bairn!"

"_Er,_" said Aziraphale. "_Er. Yes. Perhaps we'd just better wait a bit, what do you think?"_

"Until he grows up, do you mean?" said Crowley.)

Dog began to grow. He'd miss the rats.

Adam looked at the Them. _They _were his kind of people, too, especially now.

You just had to decide who your friends really were.

He turned back to the Four.

"Don't bother," said Adam, quietly.

The slouch and slur was gone from his voice. It had strange harmonics. No one human could disobey a voice like that.

War laughed. "That's my boy," she said. "Play with your toys. Play the games we've set."

"Go on, Pepper," said Adam.

Pepper stepped forward and raised a trembling arm.

It wasn't much of a sword, but it was about the best you could do with two bits of wood and a piece of string.

"I _see_," she said. "_Yes_." She drew her own blade and brought it up so that it made a noise like a finger being dragged around a wineglass. Adam shivered and soaked it up.

There was a flash as they connected.

Death stared into Adam's eyes.

There was an impressive ringing noise.

The rest of the Them stared at the wooden sword rocking to a standstill on the concrete path, but were still numb because they had to be.

"But, but," said Brian--Adam was distracted--"she got--she got _sucked up_--Pepper--"

The air between Adam and Death began to vibrate, as in a heatwave.

Wensleydale raised his head and looked Famine in the sunken eye. He held something that, with a bit of imagination, could be considered to be a pair of scales made of more string and twigs. Then he half-heartedly whirled it around his head.

Famine stuck out a predatory arm.

There was another flash, and another wooden weapon of sorts made a dull thunking sound as it hit the ground.

Adam said nothing, entranced.

Pollution had already started to run, or at least to flow quickly, toward Brian, who wanted in his heart of hearts to back up, but couldn't. He took off his circle of grass stalks and all but handed it to Pollution. This time the explosion was a red flame inside of a billow of black smoke, and it smelled of oil.

From its midst, Pollution stepped out, smiling a little.

The Four knew where they had gone, and three of them were cruelly pleased with the knowledge.

THAT'S NOT WHERE THEY BELONG, said Death, but no one was listening.

There was a tearing sound. Death's robe split and his wings unfolded. Angel's wings. But not of feathers. They were wings of night, wings that were shapes cut through the matter of creation into darkness underneath, in which a few distant lights glimmered, lights that may have been stars or may have been something entirely else.

BUT I, he said, AM NOT LIKE THEM, OR THE THEM. I AM AZRAEL, CREATED TO BE CREATION'S SHADOW. I CANNOT DESTROY YOU.

The heat of their stare spiked, then faded. Adam scratched his nose.

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "There might be a way." He grinned back. "But probably not an easy one.

"Anyway, it's going to start now." he said. "All this stuff with the machines. You've got to do what I say just for now, and I say it's got to start."

Death shrugged. IT IS STARTING ALREADY. WITH THEM, he indicated the steadily growing auras of the other three Horsepersons, IT MUST PROCEED. NORMAL ENTROPY LOSES.

THEY'LL NEVER GO AWAY ENTIRELY, he said. THEY'RE NEVER FAR AWAY.

"That's okay," said Adam.

The wings flapped, just once.

"C'mon," said War, "what's taking you so long?"

"Right then," said Adam, "all right. It's going to happen. All the stuff you started. Now."

Newt stared desperately at the equipment racks.

He held Anathema's hand.

"I wasn't really a computer engineer, you know," he said sadly. "I could only get things working halfway. They'd go completely wrong in the middle. They came out all right, though."

"Hm," said Anathema.

They stared at the machines despondently.

He thumped the nearest cabinet, just in case.

All over the world. people who had been wrestling with switches found their efforts increasingly futile. Circuit breakers refused to cooperate. Computers continued planning World War II and ignored the stratosphere entirely. In bunkers under Novya Zemla men found that the fuses they were frantically trying to pull out seemed ever more insistent on staying close to the wall; in bunkers under Wyoming and Nebraska, men in fatigues stopped screaming and waving guns at one another, because it wasn't worth it anymore. They sat down and had a beer because they figured soon it wouldn't matter whether it was against regulations or not.

The lights stayed off. Civilization continued its slide into chaos, except for pockets here and there where people who were always unruffled started writing letters to the newspapers about how people got overexcited about the least little thing these days.

In Tadfield, the machines ceased radiating menace and started radiating a savage delight.

"Gosh," said Newt.

"It's all right," said Anathema, though it wasn't really. She kept holding his hand. Their tears stood bright against their cheeks, but neither commented on it, but for once when Newt brushed her face and held her close and smelled her hair.

They stayed that way, in each other's arms, waiting.

Finally Anathema stood up. "Come on," she said. Newt looked at her incredulously. "I'm not dying here. If it has to happen, I want to see it. I want to spit in its face."

"All right," said Newt, because there was nothing else to say.

"He wanted to do it," said Crowley. "Haven't I always told you, angel? If you take the trouble to look, deep down inside anyone, you'll find at the bottom they've really been a bastard all along.

"Anyway," he continued, looking around, "it's not over."

Adam turned and appeared to notice them for the first time. Crowley was not used to people identifying him so readily, but Adam stared at him as though Crowley's entire life history was pasted inside the back of his skull and he, Adam, was reading it. For an instant he knew real terror. Then it stayed. He'd always thought the sort he'd felt before was the genuine article, but that was mere abject fear beside this new sensation. Those Below could make you cease to exist by, well, hurting you in unbearable amounts, but this boy could not only make you cease to exist merely by thinking about it, but probably could arrange matters so that you never had existed at all. Looking at his dreamlike smile, Crowley didn't think he would stop himself, if the whim hit him.

And then, if he wanted to, he could bring you back, and keep you.

Adam's gaze swept to Aziraphale.

"'Scuse me, why're you two people?" said Adam.

"_Well_," said Aziraphale,"_it's a long--_"

"It's not right, being two people," said Adam. "I reckon you'd better go back to being two sep'rate people."

There were no showy special effects, which was somehow scarier. There was just Aziraphale, sitting next to Madame Tracy.

"Ooh, that felt tingly," she said. She looked Aziraphale up and down. "Oh," she said, in a slightly disappointed voice. "Somehow, I thought you'd be younger."

Shadwell glowered jealously at the angel and thumbed the Thundergun's hammer in a pointed sort of way.

Aziraphale looked down at his new body which was, unfortunately, very much like his old body, although the overcoat was cleaner.

"Well, that's over," he said.

"No," said Crowley. "No. It isn't, you see. Not at all."

Now there _were_ clouds overhead, curling like a pot of tagliatelli on full boil.

"You see," said Crowley, his voice leaden with fatalistic gloom, "it doesn't really work that simply. You think wars get started because some old duke gets shot, or someone cuts off someone's ear, or someone's sited their missiles in the wrong place. It's not like that. That's just, well, just _reasons_, which haven't got anything to do with it. what really causes wars is two sides that can't stand the sight of one another and the pressure builds up and up and then anything will cause it. Anything at all."

He took a deep breath. He summoned courage that he hadn't had to use for a very, very long time.

He looked what shouldn't have been his Enemy in the eye, or almost in the eye--right under the eyes--and asked, "What's your name . . . er . . . what's your name?"

"That's Adam Young," said Anathema, as she strode up with Newt trailing after her.

"That's right, Adam Young," said Adam.

"Good effort. You've condemned the world, right on schedule. Have a half-holiday," said Crowley. Aziraphale heard the bitterness in his voice and put a hand on his arm. "But even if you hadn't, it wouldn't have made a difference anyway."

"I think you're right," said Aziraphale. "I'm sure my people _want _Armageddon. It's very sad."

"Would anyone mind telling us what's going on?" said Anathema sternly, folding her arms, even though she already knew, really.

Aziraphale shrugged, his hand moving on Crowley's arm. "It's a very long story," he began.

Anathema stuck out her chin. "Go on, then," she said. Anything to avoid the inevitable. Ineffable.

"Well. In the Beginning--"

The lightning flashed, struck the ground a few meters form Adam, and stayed there, a sizzling column that broadened at the base, as though the wild electricity was filling an invisible mold. The humans pressed back against the jeep.

The lightning vanished, and a young man made out of golden fire stood there.

"Oh dear," said Aziraphale. "It's him."

"Him who?" said Crowley, listlessly.

"The Voice of God," said the angel. "The Metatron." He didn't remove his hand from Crowley's arm and they both took a small comfort in that. Defiance in any form was welcome.

The beautiful blank gaze fell on Adam Young, and then turned sharply to look at the concrete beside it, which was boiling.

A figure rose from the churning ground in the manner of the demon king in a pantomime, but if this one was ever in a pantomime, it was the one where no one walked out alive and they had to get a priest to burn the place down afterwards. It was not greatly different to the other figure, except that its flames were blood-red.

"Er," said Crowley, trying to shrink into his seat. "Hi . . . er."

The red thing gave him the briefest of glances, as though marking him for future consumption, and then stared at Adam. When it spoke, its voice was like a million flies taking off in a hurry.

It buzzed a word that felt, to those humans who heard it, like a file dragged down the spine.

It was talking to Adam, who said, "Huh? No. I said already. My name's Adam Young." He looked the figure up and down. "What's yours?"

"Beelzebub," Crowley supplied. "He's the Lord of--"

"Thank you, Crowzley," said Beelzebub. "Later we have to have a talk. I am sure thou hazzt muzzch to tell me, and I will be glad to lizzten." He looked at Aziraphale. "Good job on the thizz, but we have ozzer thingzz to talk about."

"Er," said Crowley, "well, you see, it happened a long time ago--"

"Silenzz!"

"Right. Right," said Crowley hurriedly.

"Now then, Adam Young," said the Metatron, "while we can of course appreciate your assistance at this point (and I really must urge you to choose in the other direction, it will be very unpleasant, you understand), we must add that Armageddon should take place _now_. There may be some temporary inconvenience, but that should hardly stand in the way of the ultimate good."

"Ah," whispered Crowley to Aziraphale, "what he means is, we have to destroy the world in order to save it."

"Azz to what it standz in the way of, that hazz yet to be decided," buzzed Beelzebub. "But it muzzt be decided _now_, boy. That izz they dezztiny. It izz written."

Adam took a deep breath. The human watchers held theirs. Crowley and Aziraphale had forgotten to breathe some time ago.

Adam looked levelly at the Metatron, but his attention was on Beelzebub.

"I just don't see why everyone and everything has to be saved, like that," Adam said. "Like forest fires. It--cleans. You know. An' all the dying whales an' grass an' trees an' stuff. To see who has the best gang, that's important. Like us--" he gestured to the Four, who had faded, inasmuch as they could, to the background. "An' the Johnsonites. But I don't think it's such a good idea to have people like these two," he pointed to Crowley and Aziraphale, "to mess people around. It's hard enough bein' people as it is--" after all, he'd spent eleven whole years as mostly human, he figured he was something of an expert, and he wasn't totally without pity--"without other people coming and messin' you around. But in general. 'Sgood idea."

Crowley turned to Aziraphale.

"Johnsonites?" he whispered.

The angel shrugged. "Early breakaway sect, I think," he said. "Sort of Gnostics. Like the Ophites." His forehead wrinkled. "Or were they the Sethites? No, I'm thinking of the Collyridians. Oh dear. I'm sorry, there were hundreds of them, it's so hard to keep track."

"People bein' messed around," murmured Crowley.

"All right," said the Metatron. He looked at Aziraphale, hard. "Anyway, we've been a little iffy on the subject of . . . _agents_." The words were disdainful, and, from what they could see of his expression through the divine fire, his face was more so. "They seem to go a little too . . . native."

By now Aziraphale and Crowley were nearly holding hands, but neither cared what anyone saw just now.

Nothing seemed to matter too much, anymore.

Newt and Anathema shuffled closer to each other, fingers tightening.

"Well," said Adam. "I dunt know about _that_. That's okay, sometimes."

Beelzbub made a noise that sounded like an undignified _harrumph_, but no one commented. Newt thought it might be the blood-red fire, which was a little offsetting, to be honest.

"But if_ I_ was in charge, anyway, I'd try makin' people live a lot longer, like ole Methuselah. It'd be a lot more interestin' and they might start thinkin' about the sort of things they're doing to all the envir_o_nment and ecology, because they'll still be around in a hundred years' time."

"Ah," said Beelzebub, and he actually began to smile. "You wizzsh to rule that the word. That'z more like thy Father."

"I thought about that," said Adam, "and I'm not sure I want to."

Everyone looked at him.

"But I still think startin' over'd be better. I could--get people. To rule."

Crowley's hand slipped into Aziraphale's and stayed there. Newt and Anathema were almost one person now. Newt noticed that Shadwell seemed awfully close to Madame Tracy, and reflected morosely that that about summed up the whole situation.

Adam hummed to himself.

The Four started to advance.

"Yeah," said Adam, "I reckon that it'd be better to just start over."

The sky wavered. Clouds began to weave into other clouds, yellow and purple; bruise-colored thunderheads.

"But," said Aziraphale. He squeezed Crowley's fingers. "But. Er. This Great Plan, this would be the _ineffable_ Plan, would it?"

There was a moment's silence.

"It's the Great Plan," said the Metatron flatly. "You are well aware. There shall be a world lasting six thousand years and it will conclude with--"

"Yes, yes, that's the Great Plan all right," said Aziraphale. He spoke politely and respectfully, but with the air of one who has just asked an unwelcome question at a political meeting and wont' go away until he gets an answer. "I was just asking if it's ineffable as well. I just want to be clear on this point."

"It doesn't matter!" snapped the Metatron. "It's the same thing, surely!"

_Surely? _thought Crowley. They don't actually _know_. He started to grin like an idiot.

"So you're not one hundred percent clear on this?" said Aziraphale.

"It's not given to us to understand the _ineffable _Plan," said the Metatron, "but of course the Great Plan--"

"But the Great Plan can only be a tiny part of the overall ineffability," said Crowley, just managing to avoid looking at Adam. "You can't be certain that what's happening right now is exactly right, from an ineffable point of view."

"It izz written!" bellowed Beelzebub.

"But it might be written differently somewhere else," said Crowley. "Where you can't read it."

"In bigger letters," said Aziraphale.

"Underlined," Crowley added.

"Twice," suggested Aziraphale.

"Perhaps this isn't just a test of the world," said Crowley. "It might be a test of you people, too. Hmm?"

"God does not play games with His loyal servants," said the Metatron, but in a worried tone of voice.

"Whooo-eee," said Crowley. "Where have you _been?_"

Everyone found their eyes turning toward Adam. He seemed to be thinking very carefully.

Eventually he said, "No."

Crowley and Aziraphale wilted, and Anathema let out a pained cry, much to her own embarrassment.

"Well," he said, "I mean, it's silly to write things down. They can always be crossed out. But if you know it in your head, then." He stopped. "Then it has to be true. Doesn't it?"

He looked around, but no one answered. He thought some more.

"Yeah," he said finally.

The clouds got darker.

Beelzebub smiled. "Good child," he said. "Thy Father woulzzd be proud, I think."

And then War let out a whoop, and Pollution glistened, and Famine grinned, and Death sighed and clutched his scythe tighter. It wasn't necessary, but it seemed to bring comfort to the dearly (or not-so) departed to see something familiar, even if it was a skeleton and a giant blade.

They stalked forward.

It began.

Anathema Device and Newton Pulsifer and Sergeant Witchfinder Shadwell and Madame Tracy stood their ground until they couldn't anymore, because they were gone.

Mushroom clouds erupted the world over.

This time there was no one left to get cancer.

Divine fire and brimstone rained together. In the end it didn't matter which was which. They did the same thing.

•••

_After_

It was dark, except for the fires, which were nearly everywhere, so Crowley supposed that really it was light. It was just a dark light, red and painful; it didn't offer any of the comfort of sunshine, or even the sterile kindness of Heaven's sky, such as it was.

Gabriel was dead. If you walked down the right corridor (and Crowley never did), you could hear Michael's screams as his wings were ripped out again and again. He didn't know what had happened to anyone else, but he didn't really want to.

"Sushi," said Crowley. He didn't say it miserably. He would have given a great deal to be merely miserable.

He looked at Aziraphale.

It was only a matter of time.

They had found a niche where the sounds of the fighting were muffled somewhat. It had been going on for days or weeks or months or millennia--it was hard to tell. Adam stood in the middle of it, unharmed, watching interestedly. Crowley couldn't look at him.

"It's all right," said Aziraphale.

"No, it's not," said Crowley. "It won't ever be."

It was accompanied by something that might have been a hoarse sob, but Aziraphale refrained from pointing it out, because it didn't mean anything, or maybe it meant too much.

"Look," said Aziraphale. "Look."

Crowley watched his face.

"I'd--I'd rather you did it," he said in a rush.

"What?"

"If it has to be done--and it does," he said hurriedly, "you know it does--I'd rather--I'd rather it was you. Than the--the Hasturs a-and the Ligurs."

Crowley did sob, once, then.

Aziraphale swallowed. His throat hurt, but it didn't make a difference. All of him hurt.

"Okay," said Crowley.

Aziraphale kissed him, lightly, on the cheek, and then Crowley gathered him in his arms, and wished they'd done this before, when ducks and books and Mozart and even Queen still existed, were still important, and then he brushed the angel's head with a gentle hand, and it all went dark.

The world went dark for Crowley, too, even though the fires were roaring and the air rang with horrible laughter.

He sat there, holding the angel, for a long, long time, and then he laid him down, and stepped out, into the throng.

And when the end came, in the form of a young, bewildered-looking angel who held his sword awkwardly but with a righteous fury, he didn't try to stop it. He saw a tear fall, because, after all, an angel loved all things, even the demon he just ran through. Didn't mean to make you cry, thought Crowley muzzily.

He smiled up at the angel, and then turned his head to Adam's feet, and then anyone could see--had anyone been looking, which they hadn't--that nothing really mattered.


End file.
